April 14, 2009 --
FORT COLLINS - Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late Massachusetts senator, told a crowd of about 500 on Monday night that America must invest in a national smart grid that can absorb solar and wind power if a switch from fossil fuel to renewable energy is to succeed.

"We have the best wind energy in the world," Kennedy, an environmental attorney, told a gathering at the Hilton Fort Collins. "We have extraordinary solar energy. If we were to collect the solar power that falls in an 85-by-85-mile desert in the Southwest, we could provide all the energy needs of our country."

Kennedy said the nation's current energy marketplace is controlled by Big Oil and Big Coal and that a new marketplace -- based around a national smart grid -- is the way to free people from pollution, greenhouse gases and international dependence on foreign oil.

"Right now we have a marketplace that is rigged to benefit the energies from hell," he said. "We can create an energy economy based on entrepreneurship instead of Saudi oil."

Kennedy said building a smart grid across the nation would cost about $150 billion and it would cost an additional $750 billion to build the additional infrastructure. "For less than $1 trillion, we could have free energy forever," he said.

Kennedy compared the building of a renewable energy smart grid to huge infrastructure efforts of the past -- the federal highway system during the 1950s and the Internet in the 1990s -- that have produced significant advancements for the nation.

Kennedy noted that the U.S. now spends about $750 billion annually to import foreign oil and that an investment in a national smart grid would soon eliminate that money flowing out of the country.

"One year without buying foreign oil and we get it all back," he said. "Think about the power of that economic stimulus."

Kennedy's remarks were part of a Clean Energy Conference sponsored by Abound Solar, the city of Fort Collins, WestMountain Alternative Energy and Wirsol.

Buck